Sex and the City

Alfonso Cuaron is in "active negotiations" with Natalie Portman to star in Gravity after failed attempts by Universal and Warner Bros. to keep Angelina Jolie interested. Nor did Blake Lively or Scarlett Johansson gain serious traction. And an attempt to push Sandra Bullock also came to naught. The r...

- Shia LaBeouf, for a second year running, tops Forbes' list of Best Actors for the Buck. As an investment, LaBeouf is very attractive: "he offers a great return…For every $1 studios spend on the 24-year-old actor his films return an average $81 of profit." LaBeouf's paychecks will continue to grow; this won't hurt his agent's requests for a raise. Forbes' top 36 earners each had to have three movies open in over 500 theaters in the past five years, and meet a myriad of other criteria including their Celebrity 100 status. LaBeouf is king and Anne Hathaway is queen at #2, earning studios $64 for each dollar they pay her. Harry Potter boy Danie...

At mid-summer, the box office is lagging just behind last year's pace and ticket sales are flat, reports Anthony D'Alessandro, who charts the season's winners, losers and studio market shares so far (as of last weekend). Will red-hot Inception take the number one box office crown from Toy Story 3? S...

-Jennifer Lawrence - star of Sundance jury winner Winter's Bone - will be entering the mainstream. She takes on Mystique in 2011's X-Men: First Class, followed by the horror film House at the End of the Street in 2012. The film follows a just-moved-in teen who discovers that she and her mother (Eliz...

In our second Oscar Talk Summer Edition, In Contention's Kris Tapley and I cover his cross-country road trip, award contenders emerging from Cannes, and the disappointing summer so far, with some debate over indie darlings Winter's Bone and The Kids Are Alright, which opens next week's Los Angeles F...

Last weekend's horrific box office numbers continued into this weekend, which returned animated family film Shrek Forever After--in its third week--to the top of the fray, the only film to crack the $20-million mark! The lucrative summer season is when the studios send their surefire top guns to do ...

Women will flock to see Sex and the City 2--no matter how dismissive its reviews--because they're starving for content aimed at them. (The pic grossed $14.2 million on Thursday.) They're fond of the four characters, and want to check out their over-the-top Patricia Field costumes. They may be disapp...

For the first time ever, this Memorial Day Weekend could mark the first-ever number one chick flick, predicts TOH box-office numbers cruncher Anthony D'Alessandro, who interviews distribution chiefs from Warners and Disney about their expectations for the four-day holiday.

In Contention's Kris Tapley, refreshed after a sojourn from his labors, and I reconvene for a summer edition of Oscar Talk. We cover the lacklustre spring season, look forward to Cannes and the summer, and dissect Iron Man 2.